Fantasy Football 2018: Early Sleepers, Dynasty Tips and Team Names

These days, there are many ways to play and enjoy fantasy football.

There are regular redraft leagues, best ball leagues and daily fantasy sports to name a few. However, one format that has really caught on with many hardcore players is dynasty leagues.

For those unfamiliar with the name, it's essentially like running your own NFL franchise. You have a draft, build a roster and have a rookie draft each season.

Unlike redraft leagues, though, you keep the same team forever and it all depends on the transactions you do on a year-to-year basis.

Here, we're going to talk about fantasy sleepers in a general sense and look at some fun team names. We're also going to supply you with a couple of tips if you're a new dynasty player. 

When you're new to a dynasty league, it can be a bit overwhelming, but we're here to help.

Let's begin with the sleepers and work our way down.

Sleepers

• Patrick Mahomes, QB, Kansas City Chiefs

• Willie Snead, WR, Baltimore Ravens

• Mike Williams, WR, Los Angeles Chargers

• Trey Burton, TE, Chicago Bears

• David Njoku, TE, Cleveland Browns

• Keke Coutee, WR, Houston Texans

• Eli Manning, QB, New York Giants

• Jerick McKinnon, RB, San Francisco 49ers

• Ronald Jones, RB, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

• Equanimeous St. Brown, WR, Green Bay Packers

Equanimeous St. Brown

This one might come as a bit of a surprise but hear us out.

In case you missed it, Equanimeous St. Brown was drafted in the sixth round by the Green Bay Packers. Seeing him fall that far was baffling.

Coming out of Notre Dame, St. Brown had a rough final season. However, that had a lot to do with his quarterback play—it was quite mediocre.

With the Packers, though, he gets an upgrade in quarterback with Aaron Rodgers.

The Packers lost wide receiver Jordy Nelson this offseason but also signed tight end Jimmy Graham.

However, on the wide receiver depth chart, St. Brown doesn't have much to compete with for the No. 3 job. Ahead of him is Davante Adams and Randall Cobb, but if you've paid attention to the Packers, you'll know the latter isn't a focal point of this offense any longer.

St. Brown possesses quite the skill set: For one, he's 6'5", weighs around 215 pounds and ran a 4.48 40-yard dash. Furthermore, he has an athletic profile similar to that of Detroit Lions wide receiver Kenny Golladay and even Braylon Edwards and grades out well.

Darron Cummings/Associated Press

Having not played an NFL snap yet, we don't have any production to go off besides these measurables.

Detractors of St. Brown might bring up the point that the Packers drafted two receivers ahead of him in J'Mon Moore and Marquez Valdes-Scantling, and training camp will be a huge indicator as to what the Packers will do.

It's also important to remember the Packers probably just took advantage of a fall with St. Brown coming off a poor final season statistically.

Either way, the 21-year-old can make plays down the field. This will complement Adams' skill set tremendously.

St. Brown isn't even being drafted at the moment in fantasy leagues.

Why not take a chance on a prospect such as him in this offense? Taking him in the final round beats trying to compete for him on the waiver wire as the year unfolds.

Like most players, St. Brown is just an injury or two away from being a top target in this offense, and both Adams and Cobb have injury histories worth noting.

Take a chance on St. Brown. You could be rewarded handsomely.

Dynasty Tips

Don't Be Afraid to Trade Rookie Picks

If you play in a dynasty league, you will know about rookie picks all too well. And quite frankly, people value these picks way too highly.

If you have a top-three pick, you will want to get a decent haul in return. That's understandable. But after that, it kind of gets wishy-washy, historically.

As Mike Tagliere of FantasyPros illustrated, these picks aren't as glorious as you might think.

He pointed out that people will highlight New Orleans Saints running back Alvin Kamara and Kansas City Chiefs RB Kareem Hunt as guys they got late, but you know what we call those guys? Outliers, and they're pretty few and far between.

Butch Dill/Associated Press

For example, if you own the 1.12 pick in a 12-man dynasty league, feel free to trade it for a guy who has multiple years of production left.

Going off of this trade chart, also courtesy of Tagliere, would you trade that pick for someone like Washington Redskins wide receiver Josh Doctson or Minnesota Vikings tight end Kyle Rudolph? If not, you certainly should.

Of course, these trade charts are arbitrary in a lot of ways, but you get the idea.

Looking back at 2016, Dynasty League Football (DLF) put out rankings for the incoming rookies. DLF is one of the premier dynasty football outlets as they are solely dedicated to dynasty leagues.

Look at some of these rankings/picks:

• 1.02: Laquon Treadwell

• 1.03: Corey Coleman

• 1.08: Tyler Boyd

• 1.10 Leonte Carroo

• 1.11: C.J. Prosise

None of those guys come close to their projected value here. The closest is Coleman, and he's still way off from that.

Don't be afraid to trade draft picks because they're incoming rookies labeled as "generational" talents. Those are few and far between. 

Use that hype to your advantage and build your team on young, consistent players who have taken real NFL snaps. 

Take the Best Player Available

Unlike redraft fantasy football leagues, dynasty is ongoing and could be forever. This rule can apply to both start-up drafts and rookie drafts.

In redraft, you want to put together a roster to win right away. In dynasty, you will also want to win immediately, but there's not as much pressure to fill out a roster that is balanced as there is in redraft.

That's where the "draft the best player available" method comes in.

With dynasty, so what if you find yourself extraordinarily deep at wide receiver but have someone like Cleveland Browns running back Carlos Hyde as your RB2? It doesn't end after this upcoming season.

Ron Schwane/Associated Press

Making trades, playing waivers and utilizing and trading rookie picks are key to building a winning roster.

You want to get the most value possible that could be used as trade assets down the line. Maybe you draft five quarterbacks but can only play one. Certainly, there's going to be someone in your league who wants to upgrade/needs one due to injury.

That's where your depth comes in, and you can supply a quarterback and potentially other assets to upgrade your running back position. It's all supply and demand.

Staying patient in dynasty is key. Too often players want to try to win right away. Of course, that's human nature, but would you rather win once right away or turn your squad into a dynasty for years to come?

Using the best-player-available method gives you the highest likelihood of that happening.

So, if you're in a start-up draft, never draft a running back over a wide receiver and vice versa because you think you need another running back or receiver.

Take the player with the most value and work it out later on.

Team Names

• With Mahomies

• The Playbook of Eli

• You Got What I Snead

• Turn Your Head and Coughlin

• Manziel In Distress

• OBJYN

• Inglorious Staffords

• Super Mario-ta

• Amari 2600

• You've Gotta McKinnon Me

Lots of people try to come up with NSFW names for a fantasy football team, but we're going to keep it PG.

There are some fun names here, including using Oakland Raiders wide receiver Amari Cooper to harken back to the time of the Atari 2600 video-game console.

The Playbook of Eli, as most of you probably gathered, takes inspiration from the 2010 film The Book of Eli, which takes place in a post-apocalyptic world and is filled with chaos and action—an accurate representation of my team every year.